Sleepover & Outings

Part VII

Dag mensen,

it is time again to upload another part of my blog. Only one day (!) is left for me in Plett and time is really flying by now. School - after a three-week vacation - started again and so were my English classes at Plett Sec. It was a nice change from laminating pictures, putting letters into envelopes, writing on my field study report to interacting with the adolescents.

As I’m so far behind in my blog, I’ll, first of all however, tell you some stories from ‘the past’ which I still remember very well:
Six weeks ago, Nikki - the English teacher from Plett Sec - invited me to a sleepover at her place in Knysna for one night. Immediately after school, we drove to her house and I got to know the whole family: Her husband Mark, and her two little charming sons Simren and Khaleb. They showed me some parts of Knysna and in the evening, we had a nice ‘braai’. As the sleepover took place during the correcting period of the end examination of the 12th graders, Saturday morning continued quite extraordinary: Nikki and I got up at 4 am, sitting in our PJs, drinking coffee, watching the beautiful sunrise over the Knysna lagoon (you can see it from their living room window) and - of course - correcting essays. Due to the fact that Nikki had to grade 666 (!) essays à 10 pages (can you believe it?! - last year, she had to grade over 1000 essays within a period of two weeks) I was even allowed to grade just like a real teacher…nice feeling ;-). I enjoyed the sleepover very much as they were incredibly open to me, e.g. answered me questions about their attitudes towards white people etc. and made me feel welcome. The sleepover gave me an insight into the family life of coloured people!
A few days later, Nikki told me that the white manager of the supermarket we went to greeted her for the first time in eight years she has been doing her groceries there because I was with her. Incredible! Another incident - of the many I have experienced already - revealing the ignorance of some South African people.

At the end of June, the school break - the winter holidays - began lasting three weeks and bringing my assistance at Plett Sec to a halt. Instead, all the volunteers were required to help with the outings at ‘Eagle Encounters’ - a little sanctuary for birds that get injured in the wild. Thus, depending on the moment you go there, you can see eagles, falcons and buzzards, e.g. Some birds are quite impressive. The outings are for the sake of the children so that they can forget their bad circumstances at home for one day and just enjoy. Luckily, they loved it! The age of the children slowly increased: On the first day, we were with the ‘little’ ones aged 6-9 and on the third, they had already grown to the age of 14-16 years. The first day was the most fun as I hadn’t seen the show yet and we were, literally, still able to play with the kids.


That’s it for now…wish you a great Sunday evening!
All the best wishes to the other side of the world!

Love, ani